Healing the Cycles that Tear Couples Apart

Respect and intimacy are the foundation on which loving relationships are built. Without such safety and connection, there can be no trust; without trust, we lose the ability to be playful, spontaneous, and joyful The following are common issues in relationships that, if unaddressed, can kill love and happiness. For each relationship-ruining issue below, I explain what it is, why it is a problem, why we do it, and what we can do instead to heal and repair this issue. When people have the courage to look at these patterns, admit their own contribution, and are willing to change and put their relationships first, even the most difficult relationship problems can be healed.

(1) Lack of Trust

Definition

Inability to trust our partners may take many forms, including feeling that they are being dishonest or hiding something from us, not trusting them to be reliable and consistent, and available when we need them, fearing they may take advantage of us, not trusting their values as human beings, or not feeling safe to express who we really are in our relationships.

Why We Do It

People may get married because they see something desirable in their partner that they don’t have in themselves, rather than because of common values. Over time, one or both partners may grow in confidence, or their needs may change, making them less willing to put up with the difference in values. Charm wears thin when our partners never help wth the dishes! Jealousy has its basis in personal insecurity and fear of abandonment. We try to control our partners so they won’t find someone better and leave us. People who have been abused as children or hurt in previous relationships, will find it difficult to trust and let themselves be open to a partner’s love. Negative communication cycles can erode feelings of trust and safety.

Why It Is a Problem

According to marital intimacy researcher Arthur Aron, Ph.D., from Stony Brook University in New York, the most loving relationships help people to expand themselves, by providing support for exploration, learning, and growth, bringing in passions and interests that broaden each other’s worlds, and encouraging spontaneity and reasonable risk-taking. However, lack of trust does the opposite – it makes our worlds smaller as we try to control our partners or subjugate our needs to theirs. When people don’t share the same fundamental values, or when we can’t trust our partners to be stable sources of attachment, insecurity and fear begin to dominate the relationship.

Consequences

Lack of trust becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading us behave in ways that alienate and anger others. When we inadvertently push away other people, we are not able to receive the genuine love they may have to give us.

What To Do Instead

Determine if you think the lack of trust is due to the way your partner has acted in the past or your own issues, or both? How much are you able to trust yourself? If you can’t trust yourself, what gets in the way – insecurity, an unhealed wound, an addiction problem, depression, or something else? If there are specific things your partner has done to erode your trust, it is important to begin talking about these in a non-blaming way. If necessary, decide what behaviors are unacceptable to you and set reasonable limits with your partner. If you are suppressing important parts of yourself to accommodate your partner, it is important to acknowledge your unmet needs and work with your partner to find a solution that allows them in. Therapy is often necessary to help repair injuries due to affairs, addictions, or other forms of unavailability, instability, and control.

(2) Blaming and Fixing

Definition

Attributing responsibility for some bad outcome to our partners. May also include thinking we have a better way of doing things or we know how they need to change, and trying to “fix” them.

Why We Do It

When something goes wrong, our brains automatically look for the cause and try to correct it. This probably gave us an evolutionary advantage in enhancing our ancestor’s chances of surviving with threats of hunger and predators. Lack of control also makes many people feel unsafe. Blaming and trying to fix our partners are ways of trying to have more control over important outcomes in our lives.

Why It Is a Problem

Most problems are multifaceted, and don’t have one linear cause. For example, a person may not find a high-paying job, despite his/her best efforts because of geographic location, age, or economic conditions. Our partners may not actually be doing anything wrong. Also, some characteristics of a person, such as introversion, intelligence, emotional sensitivity, or energy level are relatively stable, biologically built-in, and unchangeable. We may be viewing the issue through the lens of our own distortions, and our partner may have a different perspective. Blaming people often leads them to respond by defending their actions, counterattacking, or withdrawing. This creates a negative cycle of miscommunication, anger, and hurt.

Consequences

Blaming interactions can lead to what couples researcher, Sue Johnson, calls “Demon Dialogues,” - negative communication cycles in which people get stuck trying to be “right,” and the real underlying needs for connection, safety, or influence don’t get addressed. For example, in “Find the Bad Guy,” the couple gets stuck trying to prove that the other partner acted badly.

What To Do Instead

Take a good hard look at your own actions and assumptions, and how they may have, intentionally or unwittingly, contributed to the problem. Take full responsibility for your own contributions – be they miscommunication, unrealistic expectations, letting anger leak out, or being unsupportive. If you feel your partner’s actions hurt you in some way, communicate this gently, using “I” statements and speaking about your own feelings and needs that were not met, rather than what your partner “should” have done. Make requests, not demands.

Criticism and Putdowns

Definition

Making negative comments about our partner’s looks, desirability, character, or competence. Name-calling or other disrespectful ways of talking to our partner.

Why We Do It

There are many potential reasons that people criticize their partners. They may have learned this way of relating in their families and not realize the effect they are having. At a deeper level, people who are narcissistic tend to fear intimacy and therefore are vigilant for faults in their partner that may reflect badly on them, or indicate they made the wrong choice. Other times, people may hold onto unspoken anger, which can leaks out in the form of barbed comments. Those who are untrusting or who fear abandonment, may use criticism and putdowns to control their partners, so they (the partners) are less likely to assert themselves or leave.

Why It Is a Problem

Putdowns and criticism erode self-esteem and trust. Everybody has weaknesses. Loving somebody means understanding why a person is the way they are, and supporting their self-esteem and personal growth. Love also means seeing and appreciating strengths, rather than a constant focus on faults.

Consequences

Researcher John Gottman describes “criticism” and “character assassination' as two of the four “Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” that, if not healed, predict the doom of a relationship. Based on research with early-married couples, the frequency of these types of interactions in a videotaped discussion predicted marital breakup 10 years later!

What To Do Instead

Practice compassion and tolerance. Learn mindfulness or seek psychotherapy to help you begin to let go of what you can’t control. If there are things we don’t like about our partners, we can think about what happened in the person’s life to make them act that way, and the hurt child that often lies underneath our partner's anger. It helps to refocus on fixing ourselves and meeting our own needs, so we are less reactive to these aspects of our partner or can provide compassionate support for growth,

Emotional Distance

Definition

Couples don’t communicate about the feelings and needs that are most important to them. Alternatively, they substitute ‘secondary” emotions, such as anger, for the real, vulnerable emotions underneath. They may also respond to the partner’s attempts to ask for change by shutting down, acting passive-aggressively, or side-tracking the conversation to get away from feelings.

Why We Do It

Nobody likes to be vulnerable, especially if we feel that our deepest feelings and needs won’t be heard and respected by our partners. Alternatively, one partner may not know how to respond when his/her partner communicates unhappiness. We may respond by trying to “fix” the problem, rather than listening empathically. People who experienced early loss, abuse, or parental unresponsiveness, may be uncomfortable with their own or other people’s emotions and fearful of intimacy.

Why It Is a Problem and Consequences

Emotional distance can cause each partner to doubt his/her needs can ever be met. Couples begin to feel “like roommates” or lead separate lives, with communication focused only on errands and logistics. Sexual intimacy can erode, and feelings of hurt and loneliness emerge. One or other of the couple may try to get their needs met in other ways – such as through over-focusing on parenting the kids, social status, substance abuse, working all the time, or affairs. Eventually, the couple may separate.

What To Do Instead

Rebuilding emotional intimacy begins with a willingness to be authentic with oneself and one’s partner. It also involves a courageous readiness to change; to give up certain habitual patterns we may have relied on for most of our lives. Couples therapy can be especially helpful in diagnosing destructive patterns and teaching new ways of relating. Sometimes, one or both partners need individual therapy to address issues of mistrust, early emotional deprivation, trauma, or feelings of defectiveness. Restoring sexual intimacy involves making it a priority and seeing it as a way of getting both people’s needs met, rather than satisfying one partner at the expense of the other. This involves restoring trust, safe communication and focus on different ways of expressing intimacy.

Final Words

Those hurtful interactions in which people tear each other down or shut each other out, build up a reservoir of anger and injury, which, if not healed, will eventually destroy relationships. In my therapy work with couples, one or more of these problems is almost universally present The good news is that we now have effective techniques to diagnose and heal negative relationship cycles and the insecure styles of attachment, traumas, or negative patterns of viewing the world that contribute to them

About The Author

Melanie Greenberg, Ph.D. is a Clinical Psychologist, and expert on Mindfulness, Attachment. & Relationships with expertise in the Gottman approach and Emotion-Focused Therapy for couples. Dr Greenberg provides workshops and speaking engagements for organizations and nonprofits, career and weight loss coaching and psychotherapy for individuals and couples

I love guiding and teaching couples to communicate without blame, criticism and shame. Imago Relationship Therapy is a powerful modality for renewing intimacy, passion and the ability to express and be heard, receive validation and empathy, go deeper, and get your needs met. I practice in the Hudson Valley of New York. I work with Couples of all cultures and sexual orientation. My experience with Body-Centered Therapy enhances my work with Couples. Most Couples begin therapy on the verge of ending their relationship, and if both partners are willing, within a few sessions, many breakthroughs have been made, and splitting is forgotten. The relationship is healing. Find out more at http://www.ZweigTherapy.com Julie Zweig in New Paltz, NY

"without trust, we lose the ability to be playful, spontaneous, and joyful"

This applies to mostly to women. If a man isn't playful, spontaneous, and joyful initially, he won't establish the comfort and trust necessary to convince a woman to sleep with him -- especially sleep with him quickly.

Some men may say that they too need trust to be playful, spontaneous, and joyful, but these are men who struggle to attract women. And they struggle because they lack the confidence and social skills to be playful, spontaneous, and joyful initially.

When someone of any gender is not coming from an authentic place, I think the joy they express will be fake as well. . I think the need to be loved; , to be understood and responded to in a genuine way is wired into all humans. Because of trauma or having caretakers who were emotionally unable to care for them adequately, some people lose touch with this need and develop avoidant attachment and fear of intimacy.. Regarding men and women, while men may be less likely to commit initially and mote likely to have affairs, when they do commit, they depend more on the wife than women do. There is a huge, long-term health and longevity advantage to men of being married, but the research shows that married women are only slightly happier and healthier than single women.

my boyfriend and I have been having so many ups and downs in our relationship lately, after reading your essay i feel calmer than before because now i almost know where it all comes from. I'm going to practice your words and hopefully our relationship is going to get better day by day.
thank you so much.

Hey there! This is my first comment here so I just wanted to give a quick shout out and tell you I truly enjoy reading through your posts.
Can you suggest any other blogs/websites/forums that deal with
the same topics? Thank you!

I loved this article and the way it was written. It mindfully redirects someone to take responsibility in whatever is going wrong in a stuck marriage. In my new blog I am inviting every individual who is trying to break any cycle to take a one week responsibility challenge.

If you find yourself in a relationship that has all the listed negative relationship patterns in this article, please Google coercive controlling domestic violence. It is dangerous to seek relationships counselling in this situation. Please contact your nearest domestic violence hotline, if and when it is safe to do so.

Hi my name is Denise,am from the Chicago, USA. I was in love with the girl of my life,we were so in love that it was leading to our marriage forever after until her parents came in between our love and made her to break up with me,her parents told her i was not good for her and took her to another city but the love i had for her consumed me that i could not stop thinking about her.
I thought about committing suicide until i was introduced to 'Adjou Deity Spiritual Temple'. I was given a Love Spell that i casted on my ex girlfriend and this made her to leave her parents come back to me. She ignored her parents warnings and threats but choose to be with me now we are together and i am grateful to Adjou Deity Spiritual Temple for helping me bring the love of my life back to me.
You too can solve that relationship problem by applying the love spell approach for effective and permanent love.
Contact Adjou Deity Spiritual Home via their email for your speedy solutions.
AdjouDeity.spiritualtemple@yandex.com

GREETING....... I must say Dr. Kizzekpe spell really worked and I am proud to testify also. I saw a post on how a lady got her ex boyfriend back through the help of Dr.K izzekpe spell and I decided to try him because my marriage was crashing and my husband was asking for a divorce. Dr. Kizzekpe helped me and my marriage is now perfect just as he promised my husband now treats me like a queen even when he had told me before he doesn't love me anymore. well, I can not say much but if you are passing through difficulties in your relationship or marriage, contact Dr. Kizzekpe today via kizzekpespells@outlook.com and you will know what i am talking about....... Meggie

Ever since I split from my husband, I was in terrible spirits. Slowly I realized that I loved him deeply, but he wouldn't pick up my phone when I called him to apologize to him. On the advice of a friend I got in touch with Dr Lawrence he cast a spell and I waited. Three days out of nowhere there was a call. It was my husband. We are now back together and happier than ever. Thank you so much Dr Lawrence. i wish you best of lucks email Drlawrencespelltemple@hotmail.com